It displays a message on screen and deletes sectors of the hard disk chosen at random.

Affected platforms:

MS-DOS

Detection updated on:

Jan. 23, 2002

Statistics

No

Country of origin:

SPAIN

Brief Description

Anti-CNTE is a boot virus that infects the boot sector of floppy disks and hard disks and the Partition Table.

Anti-CNTE is considered a dangerous virus, as after infecting the computer, it counts the number of times the computer is booted. When the computer has been booted 300 times, Anti-CNTE displays a message on screen and overwrites sectors of the hard disk chosen at random. It will be impossible to recover the information contained in these sectors.

Anti-CNTE infects the hard disk of a computer when the computer is booted with a floppy disk infected by the virus. Then, all disks used in the computer will also be infected and the affected computer will have problems starting up.

Visible Symptoms

Computers infected by Anti-CNTE have problems starting up and work more slowly than usual.

Sometimes, Anti-CNTE is easy to identify as it displays a black screen with a message and deletes some sectors of the hard disk, resulting in the loss of information:

This screen is displayed when the computer has been booted 300 times since it was infected.